Seasons of Lace

We know who won, but what do they get?

Luscious Yarn of course!

We have two generous donors to thank for the Judged Competition Prizes:

Chris at Briar Rose Fibers will be sending one hank of Angel Face (2500 luscious yards of 100% alpaca lace-weight) to each of two winners.  I have no pictures — because the winners get to choose their colorway from whatever is currently available (or… acquire any other yarn of equal value).

Tina at Blue Moon Fiber Arts sent three luscious prizes:

one skein of Geisha (70 Kid Mohair/ 20% Mulberry Silk/ 10% Nylon, 8oz. / 226g, 995yds / 910m)

(ya know… that not black color? it’s greener in real life (and on my other computer screen).

Anyway… they’ve also provide one skein of Laci (100% Extra Fine 80’s Merino, 8oz. / 226g, 1,750 yds / 1,600m)

AND one skein of Silk Thread II (100% silk, 3.5oz. / 99g, 1,250 yds / 1,143m).

We used our friend the random number generator to assign the prizes…. but I’ve also secretly polled the winners, without revealing the actual yarns, just in case there were strong preferences (like, say, mohair allergies).  In the end, it made no difference.

For her Brilliant Achievements in Conquering Lace Disasters, tinker  will receive a skein of AngelFace in her choice of colors (or, whatever yarn of equal value she wants).  We hope that she’ll post when it arrives!

For her Thorough Documentation of Lace on Vacation, ShadowDancer will receive the other skein of AngelFace!*

For her tour de force performance with a  Lace Extravaganza, lacefreak will receive a lovely skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Silk Thread II in Midsummer Night, because she plans to knit something thin for Winter of Lace..

For her artful presentation of Lace on Display, littlelena will receive a skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Laci in Blue Moonstone

For her brilliant and subtle marriage of yarn to pattern creating a perfect Lace Partnership, thislittlepiggyknits will receive a skein of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Geisha in Thraven (I love this colorway!)

To the winners …. please be sure I have your addresses so that I can get your prizes to you!!

Meanwhile…

Don’t go away!  Coming up, we have the Viewers’ Choice Award (for which the polls are still open — don’t forget to VOTE - there are over 125 of us eligible to vote for this… let’s not disenfranchise ourselves) and…..

MORE Raffle Prizes!!!

and

a chance to help us make this even more fun when Winter of Lace opens later this year… AND….

One final round of RANDOM JOY!

(and of course, any additional lace knitting you wish to post, and updates from our prize winners).

*and yes… that’s me getting some AngelFace.  I’m more than a little pleased about that result!)

We interrupt this raffle fest to bring you the first round of Gold Medal Winners of our Judged Competitions.

You, our members, nominated various posts for the Judged Competitions.  We collected them, and set up screenings for each group, and invited our illustrious judges to go take a look.

Before we reveal their choices, let me introduce our judges to you.

In no particular order, I bring you Joe

He writes the blog Queer Joe’s Knitting Blog, where he generally has great pictures, and lots of lovely knitting.  Lately, he’s been “swatching” for a sweater — by knitting a wonderful  hat.  How he thinks he’ll get away without publishing the pattern for that hat is beyond me…. perhaps he’s already realized the truth.

To be sure we have serious LACE experience on the panel, we invited Miriam Felton.

Her lace patterns appear in places like Interweave Knits, Knitty, in her own books, and on my needles.  But despite such fame, she’s really a very charming person, who was delighted to help us with this competition.

And last, but by no means least, Jared Flood.

He writes the blog Brooklyn Tweed, designs great patterns, and takes awesome pictures.  His blog is worth subscribing to even if you don’t read a word, the pictures are so consistently good.  Of course, if you choose that option, you’ll be missing out on some good stuff… but hey, it’s your choice.

These three wonderful knitters generously agreed to look at all our nominated pictures, and to send me their top three choices for each category.  I had a go at the task myself, just to see what I was asking.  This was no easy walk through the park, let me tell you.  You’ll get to see for yourselves when it’s time to vote on the Viewers’ Choice Award.

A quick note — each of these contestants received multiple nominations (as is true pretty much through out these competitions).  We didn’t really keep track of how many times any given post was nominated, since we wanted the Judges to choose the winners, and didn’t want to weight anyone’s decision based on the number of nominations a given post received.  This also means that, though several posts were self-nominated, most self-nominated posts had “seconds” to their nominations.

But best of all…  it’s quite clear that the competition was close — there was only one category in which the first place choice was unanimous!

But enough of this background stuff, eh?  You want to hear who won… I know you do.  I’ll be doing this in several posts, so that I can have actual pictures for you to see, instead of just a bunch of links.

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As the Seasons of Lace Began, I was knitting Boing!  A Little Nothing designed by Anne Hanson.

Boing was never my primary project.  But she seemed to go along with me everywhere.

She went shopping with me as we bought summer clothes for the girls,

She drove across the country, taking in the sights of Western New York en route, adn then hung out with me in MidCoast Maine.

She traveled to Canada — twice, but failed to catch the camera’s attention either time.

She listened to the DaPonte String Quartet play glorious music at the Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Maine.

She enjoyed visits to three cities/towns in Vermont.

She went on a cruise on the Niagara River:

She went out to dinner in Dayton…

And now… vacation is over.  The girls are back in school.  This week they even have an almost full week of school (1/2 day Friday).  There has been homework.

And Boing! is finished.  She shed her needles

took a nice long soak,

stretched out in lace’s version of a bound yoga pose,

and stretched out all of her lovely lacey bits (no cramped muscles here!)

and is ready for the chill breezes that are likely to start blowing before we’re ready.

Okay, maybe almost over…

One last chance for summer lace…

And here is the shawl, on vacation in the Northeast Kingdom.

1410 yards.

Finished last night and here she is modelling by the lakeside at our house. I was hoping for some sunshine but nope. The pattern is called “crest of the waves” and it is free on ravelry. I used one skein of the knitting goddesess dk weight 100% silk. The scarf measures about 1,8 meters and 20 cm.

edit: finally some sunshine…

It was as amazing a holiday as always, I’m going to write a bit more about it on my blog but I’ll post a picture here just to tempt you to pay me a visit!

However this is all about lace over here and I did manage to knit a little bit, not as much as I hoped, but I knew I needed to finish off some plain socks first. These socks are destined for my Mum for her birthday as they’re just her colours. Shhh, she doesn’t know yet though!

I thought I’d try alternative uses for socks, unfortunately Paddy didn’t seem to keen on his new ear warmer!

Here’s a close-up

Unfortunately the week had its casualties, after a whole week of packing my knitting carefully, I managed to snap not one, but two sets of needles in my rush to pack this morning to catch the flight!

The lace sock  will have to go on hold until I do another knit picks order from Get Knitted as I don’t have a spare in that size, I think I might try and get a metal pair to ensure I have no more accidents!

I’ve been working on lace.  All over the place….

So far, I’ve knit my SoL lace at home, in my knitting chair… in a hotel in Erie Pennsylvania, in the Bob Evans near said hotel, in Joan’s car while riding all around the Buffalo, NY area, in a lovely chair in her living room, at Niagara Falls, in the Prince of Wales Hotel in Niagara on the Lake, Ontario, while crossing the Peace Bridge to and from Canada, in a hotel in Sturbridge, NY, and finally, ahhhh, in the chair looking out the window at my mom’s in Bremen, ME…oh…. and the swimming hole while the girls swam.

Willow is going to be enormous.  For the longest time, Willow looked like it was going to be too small.  That went on forever.  I’ve adapted the bottom charts, adding a few rows here and there (well, okay, adding more than a few rows).  Now suddenly it seems like I may have made it too big.  If I stretch what I have so far, it gets to be about 33″ deep.  I have, at minimum,  14 more rows (assuming I take out 14 rows that  I was going to put in), plus an edging that I want to put on the bottom.  The edging will be about 4 ” deep.  I may have to re-think….

Meanwhile, here is Willow enjoying the swimming hole in Bristol, Maine.

Here is a better picture of the swimming hole…

At one point, Willow got tired, and just collapsed on the grass…

(but look at that mesh that’s forming…. please tell me it will look like water…)

And one last shot … Willow looking out over the salt marsh at Mom’s house, having survived the swimming hole with no mishaps.

Chrysopolis is plodding along.  Whenever I want a break from the beads, I pick it up and work a few rows.  A row here is a blink compared to the 500 stitch beadfests that Willow’s rows have become.  Alas, the difference that those few rows here and there don’t show a marked difference from the last picture, so it’s photograph will have to wait until I’ve done a bit more.

Boing is still my ride-along knitting.  When we go places, Boing goes with.  Not that you can really see the progress, but Boing had to show herself off with the salt marsh too…

I really should decide just how long Boing is going to be.  I likely oughtn’t knit until the yarn is gone (of course if I do that, I’ll be going for miles… this ball of Malabrigo Lace is going to last forever!).

Meanwhile, one last glimpse of the fog rolling in and the tide rolling out,